Some of France's wealthiest individuals, including the L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, have called for a tax on the rich in a gesture of national solidarity as the government prepares to announce swingeing cuts to bring public finances under control.

Rich families around the world face a choice between surrendering privacy around their investments and significant legal risk as a consequence of new US rules designed to improve hedge fund transparency.

Western companies including Cisco Systems Inc. are poised to help build an ambitious new surveillance project in China - a citywide network of as many as 500,000 cameras that officials say will prevent crime but that human-rights advocates warn could target political dissent.

The average cost of using smartphones and tablets when travelling in the European Union will be more than halved under new plans from Brussels that will delight customers but deliver a big blow to mobile operators.

Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.

The BBC's commercial arm is the latest media group to begin experimenting with Facebook as a video-on-demand platform, with a selection of Doctor Who episodes set to be available this week in Europe, North America and Australia.